real_tabasco_sauce

Thanks for testing @Effervescent Did you find the building AI controls intuitive? I recommend binding the hotkey "Focus Fire" but its not essential.

community-testing.zip Ok, here is a testing version of the next community mod. A little bit of multiplayer testing will help us avoid the crashes we experienced last time.

My understand is that 6948 was just meant to deal with the building vs. unit issue. A unit will still be high priority (despite not being hittable) if it is within min range. In checking that a higher priority unit exists, this unit would also have to be in the allowed range, so I think a single solution could solve both these issues.

I think the target reset thing could be limited to siege units maybe. Siege units don't chase anyway, and I doubt performance would be bad since siege units have slow repeat times and you rarely see more than 25 of them. On the overshoot situation, I'd like to think its just about when the target is acquired, but I suppose we wouldn't want units to wait a whole repeat time before deciding to follow a unit that is out of range! There's surely a solution, and to be honest, I'd be ok with dipping a little into performance to find it, same with @wraitii pathing patch: https://code.wildfiregames.com/D5037 imo such significant improvements like these are worth a little decrease in performance.

I figured this discussion would come up. Unfortunately, I think some improvements are needed for how bolts and catapults behave, and as will be seen later, all units. I made both of these reported as issues: https://gitea.wildfiregames.com/0ad/0ad/issues/7074 https://gitea.wildfiregames.com/0ad/0ad/issues/6948 What i noticed in regard to the first one is that bolts and siege towers may massively overshoot their min or max ranges depending on the movement on the chosen target: If you retreat units away from a catapult during the repeat time, the catapults will take the movement into account and still shoot the unit if it is outside the attack range. This results in shots that fly far away and very high. For bolts, this means a unit may be shot one time if it crosses the min range after the target was acquired, then it seems the bolt goes idle and keeps trying to shoot this unit because it gets shot as soon as it leaves the min range, even if other targets are available. What is interesting to think about is what this means for everyday units. Have you ever been retreating from some group of units and thought "how could that hit me?". Likely its been crossbows, pikemen, or ram ships, because they have a slower repeat time. Even if the amount a unit can move in 1 to 3 seconds isn't that far, I think everyday gameplay would be more readable if no overshooting was possible. I am almost sure of the reason: Range queries are done after the completion of the last attack.

Another idea could be to give Britons a barracks discount and make the Persian one just a stable discount. I’d probably buff the stable discount for Persia in that case. britons are an infantry heavy civ, and while this would be an eco bonus, it wouldn’t be so uniformly strong as an unit discount. I imagine it would help a lot early on and later on when u try to get like 10 barracks.

Oh I was just talking about the stacking with other civs, like imagine the 10% discount on top of the 10% discount ibers get. That would be super OP. Also I think people would just boom in p1 even more than they already do.

But we are talking about team bonuses here.

I don't think a speed bonus would be good especially since caracutos's global speed buff. Ok ok, ill come up with some others: Discount for defensive structures (or some subset: forts maybe? walls and palisades?) Buildings and support units get increased vision range?

Ok, idea I just came up with for brit civ bonus: The Briton team bonus is quite sub-optimal: it rarely comes into play and it doesn't make much of a difference. At the same time, the gauls bonus is quite generic, affecting all military techs, which leads to no change in how the game is played. Since the brits and gauls are sister civs, I think it would be neat to give them sister team bonuses, and there are multiple ways to go about this. 1. Brits: 30% cheaper ranged damage and pierce armor techs, gauls 30% melee damage and hack armor techs. The way they are split is up to debate, but I think this would be a great idea for a brit team bonus.

Ok, any balance concerns I can address in a new version? Are swordcav too weak compared to spear cav? Perhaps a new briton team bonus?

https://gitea.wildfiregames.com/0ad/0ad-community-mod-a26/pulls some more com mod changes: reintroduced non-random building ai (see the discussion for that) Ptol civ bonuses: bolt shooters now get 10% net damage buff instead of 0, all 3 farming techs available in village phase roman reforms allows conscript spearmen from cc kushite pyramid 150s,75m 120sec -> 100s, 100m, 100sec (should help with build order flexibility, doesn't "punish" the player by only allowing one barracks with 300 starting stone)

No, but relatively few newbs are playing the community mod. Also for the newbs that do, its not absolutely required since you could do just fine with regular right click and autorally (ctrl). If/when this goes to 0ad, it will be bound to something and I'll make it clear in the loading screen tooltip.

Ok, so because the hotkeys were interfering (both set to ctrl), I heeded @Vantha's advice and just made a new hotkey called "Focus Fire". This is what you use to make the red crosshair appear and only control the building's arrows. It is unbound by default, and for now I let users know this in the loading screen tip.

Ok, well maybe I can make a new hotkey but i don't think I can make it bound by default in a mod. So I prefer leaving it as is for the mod, but I'd support making a new hotkey so people don't have to use their force-attack key if they don't want to.

Sort of @Vantha . The thing is both functions are making use of existing hotkeys. I think the text should say force-attack and “auto rally” so users know what hotkey they might want to change. In that case I could actually add this tooltip to the mod too. i think force-attack is pretty intuitive and that auto rally could be renamed at some point if we want it to be more intuitive.

Well, what I intend to go there is the force-attack hotkey, but it is currently ctrl by default.

Ok, i've made those changes to the text I described above, but I think we can worry about this if/when this goes to merge request for 0ad. At that time, we will also need to decide a new hotkey for force-attack (I vote "f" since capture is "c"). In the meantime, I'll try and add it back to the community mod. If people want to test it with me, I can make some changes before it goes to the com mod. I've added a testing version to the home page, and I'll add it below. If you have it downloaded and see me in the game lobby, i'd be happy to test it some. (its the same as the one on page 7). community-testing.zip

What will the tooltip say? Probably something like: "Building arrows can be controlled independently of the rally point. Right-clicking on an enemy sets both the rally point and building arrows to that enemy (Right). Use [ctrl] to only set the rally point on an enemy (middle), and use [force-attack] to only target the building arrows on an enemy (left)."

Yes, it looks much better. I'm so used to low settings I forget how real the game can look! I guess the cursors look a little fuzzy, but I meant to make them large.

Should it be the default settings?